Yeah, it really is about the kids.

Two weeks ago was James' birthday. One of the things we did for the party was get helium-filled balloons for each of the kids.  That included James and Daniel.  James mostly didn't care which one he got, I let him pick them all, so he only selected ones he liked. Daniel, on the other hand, was impressed beyond measure with the "present balloon". Pictured left: BLOON! Actually, both of them are impressed with the cube-loon, James asked me to draw a man with a "present balloon" the other day when we were playing with crayons, but Daniel is far more enamored with it. For the last two weeks he will periodically, happily announce "BLOON!" when he is carrying it around, or occasionally call out plaintively "Bloon!"  when he's suffering withdrawal and he can't reach the ribbon himself.  I've taken to giving it to him when I'm changing his diaper because it's the only thing pretty much guaranteed to keep him still.

Daddy! Fix iiiiiiit! Seriously, I can't even guess how they get these slinkies in this kind of state in the first place. I might stand a better chance of unravelling it if I knew how it was created.

I'm spoiling the punch-line on this one because it's tied for the worst part of this story and we don't need both of them buried down below. Christine picked up some new books for James that, on my initial review, I thought were pretty good.  National Geographic Kids readers.  They were collections of four individual readers, all Level 1 and 2, bundled together in a square-bound book about the dimensions of a regular Nat-Geo magazine.  They're well beyond James' ability to read, but he gets engaged in lots of other L1/L2 stories in the bookshelf, and I liked the non-fiction stuff for him, too, so it seemed like a win. Last night she read him Sharks  and we both learned quite differently.  He was into the story while she was reading it but the section about Bethany Hamilton made more of an impression on him than it seemed at first.  After they finished the story I took him to the bathroom to sit on the potty and brush his teeth.  While he was there he suddenly l

Yesterday was James' fourth birthday.  That's a pretty big milestone because now's about the age when he starts really thinking about other people as people and not just sources of stuff.  It's tough sometimes to remember that kids go through a (fairly long) period where they simply can't understand concepts like "that makes me sad" and why they wouldn't want to make someone else sad.  It's normal brain development, but once you have empathy, it's really, really difficult to understand that these little people who don't have it yet aren't being mean, they're just being themselves and almost every one of them will grow out of it. For James, there was a bit of a gradual development of empathy, he would periodically announce some fact that he understood  — I shouldn't hit Brazen-cat because she will be sad .  — but mostly it still seemed to be a collection of facts, not something he understood implicitly.  Then, over the holidays

I love these awful things .  I'm tragically  —  yet apologetically  — addicted to these.  They are, in fact, the first thing my grandmother taught me how to make because they're both easy and something I couldn't get enough of. Daniel is an absolute fiend for marshmallows and word has it that he often steals Lynne's peanut-buttered toast in the mornings at daycare (frequently after having had a breakfast larger than his brother, so it's not like we're starving the boy), so when Christine made a pan of these on Sunday, it seemed safe to assume he was going to like these. He was actually a little bit lukewarm on them the on Sunday and Monday evening we finished up our box of Lindt chocolates for dessert, so it wasn't until last night he really got to give them his true assessment.  For the record, James liked them well enough.  Daniel, on the other hand, took one bite, then announced " Awesome! " and literally stuffed the rest of his into his mou

James is making great progress with the whole trips-to-the-potty thing but the hand-washing side is still kind of hit-and-miss.  He does better than many , though, so we'll leave it at that. Today the two of us were hanging out colouring and he up and runs off to the bathroom.  I know what that means, so I followed him along.  By the time I caught up he was mostly finished (yes, I'm slow getting up from sitting cross-legged on the floor while colouring ...) but we're going to call it a 100% success.  So then he pulled up his pants and I said he should go wash his hands. This is where things went a bit off the rails. He walked over to the sink and placed his mouth firmly on the edge of it, then licked the rim.  I probably over-reacted, but whatever, you need to act quickly sometimes. "James, don't!  Don't lick the sink, it's not clean, buddy!" James stops and thinks about this for a moment.  "Because it's dirty! " I considered

Somehow -- and this is no doubt tempting fate by even acknowledging it -- I was the only one of the four of us to not get an awful, coughing cold during the holidays.  But everyone soldiered on through it, nobody went too insane, despite being sick and unable to get a decent sleep. That said, it's very nice to be home again.  And what should be waiting for us when we arrived, but presents from Aunt Trish and cousins Kelley, Kevin and Ryan.  Yay!  Thank you, guys.